A database often refers to an ordered assembly of data on which transactions are performed. Prior art database systems often employ methods to process transactions in such a manner that a database may be restored to a previous state in the event of a system failure such as a communications network failure or a computational system crash. To achieve consistency and durability of a database, certain prior art information technology systems perform database backup operations wherein copies of data stored in one or more databases are stored as separate assemblies of data, i.e., backup databases. In case of a failure, these backup databases (“backups”) are used recover an originating database from which the data of the backed database was copied before the failure.
The prior art further includes methods and systems that generate incremental backups. After a full backup process wherein a backup of the full database is generated, a subsequent incremental backup process is employed to generate an incremental backup and capture an image of only the data that has changed since the most recent full backup was performed. It is understood that the data of the backup database, and information describing the data and organization of the comprising database, may be compressed for storage and later uncompressed for database restoration operations.
The generation of incremental backups can continue indefinitely, wherein a continuous number of subsequent incremental backups may be performed and created, wherein each incremental backup includes information describing changes made to the comprising database that have occurred after the most recently generated incremental backup.
In the prior art recovery operations, the most recently generated full backup may be first restored in a process of restoring a database in a memory. The database changes documented in the first incremental backup may then distributed to the appropriate memory locations within the comprising memory to reinstantiate the database substantially to the state that the source database was at the time that the first incremental backup was initiated. This prior art process may then be successively iterated for each of the incremental backups in an order in which the series of incremental backups were generated.
In certain prior art computational systems, a full backup process may include gathering all files and directories and their content from a file system and writing the gathered information to a memory. An incremental backup that follows may be limited to writing out information that is new or has been modified since a most recent full backup, wherein the information may describe changes in database structure, organization, and/or relationships of data within the database. The common modifications to a database include addition, removal and renaming of software objects, records, files and sub-directories, as well as content update of an existing object, record or file in the instant database.
The prior art further includes federated databases wherein multiple or pluralities of databases are maintained within a computer or a communications network, such as by a plurality of servers communicatively coupled with, or comprised within, the Internet. Various prior art federated databases include one or more relational databases, object oriented databases, network model databases and/or hierarchical databases.
Yet the prior art fails to optimally provide for the efficient backup and restoration of software records or software objects as incrementally stored in relation to a time of an incremental backup and/or particular database backups, either in isolation or as an aspect of a federated database.